


im going to fucking kill robin

by grilledpbnj



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Aliens, Angst, Animal Death, Batdad, Batfamily Feels, Body Horror, Dad Bruce Wayne, Dead Robins, Dick Grayson is Robin, F/M, Gen, M/M, Other, Protective Bruce Wayne, batfam, robin dies, superman drinks coffee
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2016-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-18 10:14:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 16
Words: 14,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4702262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grilledpbnj/pseuds/grilledpbnj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>why the fuck would you let a child fight crime</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. home

**Author's Note:**

> How long is this story going to be? Are people going to fuck? How many times is Robin going to get shot through the kneecap? I don't know. You don't know. It's a mystery. Let's find out. TOGETHER.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://ig2fkr.tumblr.com/

“I don’t envy the kid.” Her voice was grim.

“Are you kidding me?” His was incredulous. “Have you seen that house? House – you can’t even call it that. Wayne fucking Manor. I tell ya, if I were a kid and I was gonna have my parents killed like that, that’s the place I’d wanna end up. That kid’ll have all the ponies and trips to Disneyland anyone could ever ask for.”

“It’s for press,” she said dismissively. “It’s all for press. A guy like that – you really think he wants a kid? You think he’s gonna take time off from jet-setting and womanizing to be a father? It’s press. I feel bad for that kid.”

“I’m not gonna shed any tears for him, that’s for damn sure.” He checked his watch. “Should be here about any minute now. The kid ready?”

As if on cue, there was a smart little rap on the door. It opened, and the black-haired head of a boy popped in. He couldn’t have been older than thirteen. “It’s five thirty,” he said, his born-charming smile betraying none of the anxiety he must have been feeling.

“We’ll wait with you up front,” she said, putting down her nail file. “You got your stuff? All packed up?” She met him at the door and opened it, revealing the boy holding only one meager rucksack.

“They said I’d get all new things,” he said brightly. “So it’s just, you know, the important stuff.” He held it to his chest, a little tightly.

They waited on the steps of the building. The streets and sidewalks were full, and the boy watched passerby with eager eyes, but with his arms wrapped around his bag and his knees drawn up to his chest. Restrained. He was absorbed in the motion of the crowd.

She checked her watch, shaded her eyes against the angled autumn sunlight.

A black car, sleek but surprisingly subtle, slid into the parking bay.

The man who emerged was not the handsome billionaire they had been expecting, but a thin, silver-haired man, extremely straight-shouldered, with a small and dignified mustache. He held a small sign.

RICHARD GRAYSON

She walked the boy down to the car, eyebrows knit together. “We were expecting Mr. Wayne,” she said.

“He sends his apologies,” said the man. He had a proper British accent, just like you would expect a servant of one of the richest families in the world to have. “Business intervened.” He looked past her, to the boy. “Richard Grayson, I presume?”

“Dick,” she said, before he could respond. “His name is Dick.”

“Hi.” Dick extended a hand and beamed his beatific smile.

“Alfred Pennyworth.” The man shook his hand, some genuine warmth in the gesture. “A pleasure. May I take your bags, master Dick?”

“I’ve got it,” said Dick, and again held the bag close to his chest.

“Very well.” The man opened the passenger door for him. “Shall we be on our way?”

Dick turned and looked up at her. A look came over his face, a look far too serious for someone so young, holding enough somber awareness to make her spine prickle. In that moment it was as if there was a very old man in his very young body.

“Thank you for everything,” he said.

“It’s my job,” she said, and then, unable to resist, she bent to hug him. She even ruffled his dark hair, disguising the lump in her throat as a cough as she released him. “You be good out there.”

He grinned up at her, and he was back to his youthful self, the same boy that had demanded her attention with a “Look what I can do!” and a series of back flips the first day they’d met.

Then he turned and so quickly he was gone, the car pulling out and disappearing into the waves of traffic, the visual noise and smog of the city. She looked at the sky and was unsettled. The sun shone, but was obscured through a thin veneer of cloud, and dissipated a sullen orange light. Only August, but there was already a chill in the air.

Her partner joined her at the base of the steps and lit a cigarette.

“Poor kid,” she said.

“Hey, you wanna see a poor kid, Gotham’s got plenty of those,” he said, taking a deep drag and exhaling with a grim satisfaction. “We’ll probably see five more tomorrow. That kid – he’s got a benefactor. Good press, shit, who cares? He’ll go to private school. He’s probably got a tiny little Armani tux waiting for him back at the manor. Boo hoo, what a life.”

She said nothing.

There came the tinny wail of a siren, at first quiet, but rising to a shrill scream, and joined by many others, blurring into a single cacophonous tone.

She shouldered the jacket she’d kept hanging over her arm. The air was getting cold.


	2. halloween

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://ig2fkr.tumblr.com for updates and other bullshit

Halloween.

Masked children ran in the empty street, shrieking laughter. Their parents dwindled a ways behind, hands clasped, weary from a night of herding six year olds, but smiling. This was a good neighborhood.

Had been a good neighborhood.

The children stomped in the puddles from a recent rain, until one stopped and, pointing upwards, indicated the moon as it loomed from a fading cloud. Brilliant moonlight flooded the street. It illuminated the barrel of the gun of the man who slipped from the alley.

He stood between the now-frozen parents and their children, who hadn’t even noticed, and continued giggling down the street. The man extended a hand, and grunted.

The woman went white. The husband raised his hands placatingly.

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m getting out my wallet.” He reached into his pocket.

“Hurry it up then,” grunted the man.

The moon slid once more behind a cloud, and the street went dark. The children faded away somewhere down the street. The woman moved involuntarily in their direction, and the man whipped his gun onto her. His hand quaked – with adrenaline, or exhilaration, or the effect of some drug.

She gave a tiny shriek, more like a squeak, the sound totally lost in the long street, but her husband moved in her defense. The mugger turned the gun on him, barking a wordless warning. In the shaking of his hand, the gun dropped, and for a moment it seemed as though the gun were suspended in midair. All of them stared, identical panic on all three faces.

The gun clattered onto the sidewalk. Both men lunged for it.

Hearing the grappling chaos, the children faltered at the end of the street, turned, and looked back. The youngest reached impulsively for her brother’s hand.

The husband got the gun, drew his hand back, fired a wild shot into the air. The mugger clocked him. The wife screamed.

Blackness seized the mugger and dragged him into the air. He vanished with an “Ulp!”.

The wife looked shell-shocked for a moment, then scrambled over to her husband, touching his face. He waved her off, rubbing his jaw. She left a hand on his shoulder and gazed down the street, calling shrilly for their children.

The girl pulled off her mask, revealing a pale, frightened face. She left her brother to run across the street, and in that moment, a truck turned the corner. Her tiny body was silhouetted in the swiftly oncoming lights.

Before the mother could scream or the brother could move, a nimble blur shot out from the bushes, seized the girl, and took her from the street.

The truck blared its horn once and rushed by without stopping.

The little girl, finding herself suddenly on her feet on the sidewalk, was too shocked to cry. She looked up at the boy who had saved her. He was older, masked, wearing a colorful outfit with a yellow cape.

“Hi!” he said. “I like your costume. Are you a cat?”

Chin scrunched up, borderline on tearful, she only nodded.

“Very cool. I like the ears.” He spoke to her like her brother often did, coaxing a smile after she’d skinned her knee or bumped her head. He squatted down to her level. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said in a small voice, but looking at him with increasing curiosity.

Her older brother caught up to them, and looked over the other boy for a critical second.

“You’re not Batman,” was all he had to say, sounding disappointed.

The boy in the cape laughed. Then he looked abruptly to the shadows, as if hearing or seeing something they did not. “Gotta go,” he said. “Happy Halloween, stay safe!”

And he flipped gaily into the dark and was gone, as swiftly as he had rescued the girl, and as swiftly as the mugger had been spirited away into the dark sky.

He swung and hopped his way up the side of a fire escape, reaching the roof in a matter of moments, swinging over and touching down without a sound. The mugger lay bound at his feet.

The boy looked up expectantly into the partially hooded face of a tall, dark figure. Slitted white lenses obscured the eyes in an already impassive face, as a cape of his own and the shadows themselves obscured the man, leaving everything to the imagination but a pair of powerful shoulders and a sense of sheer physical bulk.

“Well done, Robin,” said the Batman.

The boy smiled a broad, beatific smile.


	3. office coffee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> superman? in MY batman fanfic????

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> do not expect these to keep coming every day
> 
> oh shit i just realized i'm supposed to be reading oedipus rex
> 
> http://ig2fkr.tumblr.com for updates and other bullshit

He didn't like his coffee black. He liked his coffee with at least a healthy dollop of milk and sugar, and sometimes he liked to down one of those icy blended monstrosities with whipped cream on top. So worth the jabs from his officemates.

All he had now was bland, black, acidic office coffee. He could have run down to the late night bodega for one of those blended monstrosities, but he was resolved to finish this article before leaving his desk.

"You see the news?"

He looked up. Lois stood braced in his doorway, taking off her heels. She sunk her stockinged toes into the carpet with the relish of a woman who had been pounding the pavement all day.

"I thought you'd have gone home with everyone else," he said. "Don't you ever take a break?"

"Look who's talking," she said. "You're not the only one with deadlines, Kent." She propped her hip comfortably on the corner of his desk. "The news," she said again. "It's _Gotham_ news."

He put down his pen and reached for the remote.

The TV came to life midstory. Immediately there was a flash of video, a shadowy figure streaking across a roof - and followed by a smaller, somersaulting figure. A yellow cape billowed out behind them.

"Is that a _child_?"

"It gets better," said Lois. "You missed it, but there was a great clip of him nailing some crook in the gut." She mimed a karate chop done by tiny arms. "Whabam."

"How old is he? _Who_ is he?"

"Nobody knows," she said. "You know Batman; he's not exactly big on press conferences."

"Can't believe it," he murmured.

"I suppose we'll have to do an editorial on it," she said, and leaned further over his desk. "What are you working on?"

"I'll have to finish it later," he said, pushing himself back from his desk. "I have something else to take care of now."

"Business with friends?" she guessed shrewdly.

"I'll be back in time to turn this in tomorrow," he said, loosening his tie. He paused, then leaned in and gently kissed her on the forehead. "I"ll see you in the morning."

"Mm hm," she said, and he was gone.

She gathered up his papers, stacked them straight on his desk, and returned his pen to its holder. She took his coffee with her as she got up, took a grimacing sip, and turned the light off his office as she went.


	4. agamemnon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> batman makes a promise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I JUST WANNA SAY - I don't know if Superman drinks coffee. I realized that rereading the last chapter. Does Superman drink coffee? Does Superman get tired? Does Superman's alien physiology respond to caffeine in the same way as a human?? Probably not. I don't care. Maybe it's decaf! Maybe it's placebo! Whatever. I don't know anything about Superman. Coffee is good THAT'S WHY he drinks it)
> 
> http://ig2fkr.tumblr.com for updates and other bullshit

Still coming off the high of the night's patrol, Dick shadowboxed in the corner, swiping the legs out from under an invisible opponent, then silently cheered himself at his victory.

Bruce had dropped the cowl, but he still loomed over the keyboard like it was a criminal, shoulders hunched and expression dark. He was coming down from the night in his own fashion. He typed in his notes aggressively, filling his corner of the cave with the incessant rattling of the keys, and when he said "Make sure you put that uniform in the wash," he did it with the characteristic Batman growl.

"Okay," said Dick brightly, and bounded off to do so.

It was at that moment that Alfred reappeared. He eyed the uneaten platter of sandwiches with his usual delicate, silent disapproval, and joined Bruce at the enormous monitor. The brooding man did not look away from the criminal mug flashing onscreen.

"You have a visitor, master Bruce."

"I'm not home," said Bruce. He shot Alfred a sideways look, as if that should have been obvious.

"I thought perhaps you would be, for this visitor," said Alfred. "Mr. Kent has come to call."

Now Bruce dropped his hands from the keys.

Dick burst back in, tunic half off.

"Clark Kent? That's _Superman_. Right?" He was starry-eyed.

'Master Dick, are the sandwiches not to your liking?" Alfred asked pointedly.

"Oh, no," said Dick, and stuffed one in his mouth. "Theh great. Ih Thuperman coming?"

"He's awaiting you in the drawing room," said Alfred, to Bruce. "Shall I tell him you're preoccupied? I'm sure that will go over well." His sarcasm was palpable.

"No," grunted Bruce. "I'll see him." He pulled away from the computer and cut Dick off in the middle of his eager "Can I come?".

"Dick, I want you to go over that last exercise once more. And after that-"

"I need to finish my homework," said Dick, defeated.

"Yes," said Bruce, with a very small smile.

"I'll show the young master to his duties," said Alfred. He steered Dick away.

As they went, Bruce could hear Dick asking (through another mouthful of sandwich), "Do you think I could get his autograth?"

\--

Clark Kent never looked bleary-eyed, or anything less than keen (at least compared to his terrestrial counterparts), but there was something haggard about him now - something that only very practiced, or very familiar, eyes could detect.

"Long night?" asked Bruce, leaning in the doorway.

"Not as long as yours has been, I imagine," said Clark. He sat on the couch, his glasses dangling from one hand, a glass of water in the other. Alfred had placed down two coasters, with another glass set pointedly across from Kent.

 _Subtle,_ thought Bruce.

He took the seat. "Not so long," he said, picking up the glass.

"Easier now that you have a little helper?" Clark probably thought his segue was subtle.

"News spreads quickly," said Bruce.

"I have to say I was surprised-"

"You don't have to put it delicately," interrupted Bruce. "You don't approve."

Clark's eyes flashed. "Approve of a child going toe to toe with armed gunmen? Who could approve of that? Even against a background of your usual methods, I don't know how you can justify it."

"I thought we'd reached a ceasefire regarding my 'usual' methods." Bruce's tone was shrewd.

"It's different when you're endangering a-"

"Can I bring you gentlemen anything else?" Trim Alfred stood in the doorway, hands clasped behind his back.

Both men, who had been leaning across the table matching glares, settled back in their seats, Clark at least with some air of embarrassment.

"We're fine, Alfred," said Bruce.

Dick's head popped out from behind the manservant. His hair was wet from the bath, and his eyes were like saucers. Clark, looking somehow self conscious, put his glasses back on. "Er, hello," he said.

"Have you finished your homework?" asked Bruce.

"It's a reading, I was going to do it before bed," said Dick.

"Brushed your teeth?"

"Yes."

"Flossed?"

"Yes." Dick hadn't taken his eyes off the man on the couch.

Bruce sighed. "Dick, this is Clark Kent. Clark, Dick Grayson."

Dick practically leapt over the coffee table to shake his hand. "Wow!" was all he could say. "I- wow!"

"Nice to meet you, Dick," said Clark. "What are you reading for class?"

Dick looked at Bruce as if for permission, and when he nodded, said that it was "Aeschylus's Agamemnon, sir."

"Awfully adult material," said Clark.

"My teacher says that classical drama contains the building blocks to all of the human experience, not just that of adults, so we have no excuse for not understanding it," said Dick, then added quickly, "Sir."

Clark had to smile.

"And I agree with your teacher," said Bruce. "You'd better get to it, Dick."

Dick gave Clark another moony look, then let himself be towed from the room, Alfred shooting Bruce a look at they went.

"Nice kid," said Clark.

"Already top of his class," said Bruce. Clark could see pride in the way his eyes lingered in the empty doorway.

"Where are his parents?"

Bruce drew his eyes from the doorway and looked into his glass.

"Killed."

Both men sat in silence for a long moment.

"I'm sorry," said Clark into the silence, and both knew that he spoke not only of Dick's parents.

There was another silence. This time, uncharacteristically, it was Bruce that broke it.

"His youth doesn't negate his right to justice," he said. "Or lessen his desire to help other people. If he can hold his own in battle, maintain his studies, and save lives at the age most boys are nose-deep in a comic book - who am I to stop him?"

"He's too young to understand the dangers," said Clark.

"As long as he obeys, as long as he is at my side," said Bruce. "There _is_ no danger." His words were almost a growl, belonging more to the man in the cowl than the man in an armchair, in his loafers. There was a sure, lingering threat in those words.

Clark looked at him, looking into his glass. He thought of more arguments, second-guessed them all, and finally surrendered.

"I hope you're right," he said, and drained the glass.

\--

Broken glass crunched under their boots.

He could see stars through the hole in the greenhouse roof, and as he was swimming back into consciousness, it was that hole which made him remember the raucous, crashing fall. The agony in his knee, and the feeling of his black blossoming into a single pounding bruise, came second.

He gasped at the pain, then clapped his hand over his mouth.

Did they know where he was?"

As if in reply, he heard one of them grunt, "He's in here somewhere."

The voice was close.

He had no time to think about what damage adrenaline was obscuring. He rolled over onto his stomach, ignoring the bite of a surely broken rib, and more clawed than crawled his way under the nearest shelter - a low table laden with potted shrubs. Shards of glass embedded themselves deep in his gauntlets.

His foot kicked a pruning tool as he slithered painfully into the hole, and it spun off across the floor.

"Hear that?" said one of them.

He heard the distinctive click and clack of a shotgun being loaded.

He suppressed the beating of his heart, loud in his ears, craning in the empty silence for every rustle of cloth, every slight squeak of a shoe. There were at least three of them. Weapons, unknown. True numbers, unknown. Intentions, obvious.

"We know you're in here, little bird," one of them crooned.

He could feel blood pooling in his boot, and prayed that it was dark enough to obscure any blood trail he may have left behind.

There was a smash, as a plant fell or was pushed from its platform, the clay pot scattering across the floor. His eyes adjusting, he could see one of the shards settle rattlingly in the corner. He could see two pairs of feet, under the tables, moving down the rows.

Where was the third?

Something seized his ankle, and before the fear of discovery could even reach him, the pain laced up his leg in a lightning arc. He swallowed the pain, but his silence was useless, as they dragged him out into the open row, and smashed their foot down upon his knee. That howl he couldn't contain.

The throbbing of blood and offended tissue almost drowned him in darkness once more, but he was able to register their laughter and gathering around, and could try woozily to count. Three, four, eight men? They doubled and tripled in his wobbling vision, until one of them put their boot over his face, over his eyes, plunging him into pure darkness again. He had a moment of clarity before the real pain began.

"We've got a message for your boss, little bird."

 _This is all my fault,_ he thought.

_This is all my fault._

_This is all my fault._


	5. lemon balm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> plants! violence! babs!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote basically all of this in my relg 181 course  
> i dont care about jesus  
> i just care about batman
> 
> oh also! in case you didn't notice, there's a bit of a time skip (in case it isn't obvious) soo have fun with that
> 
> http://ig2fkr.tumblr.com for updates and other bullshit

Barbara Gordon woke in her bed with a start.

It was not yet morning, and the room was dark, but she could hear birds crying like alarm bells outside her window.

She lay for several minutes, disconcerted, not knowing what had burst her from her dreams. A sudden noise? A presence in the room? A sudden memory, come so forcefully to the forefront of her mind that it had slapped her out of sleep?

She flicked on her bedside lamp.

The room was as it should have been. Every book was in its place in its chaotic pile, every sweater draped over the single swamped armchair. The balled up socks of the previous night lay where she had discarded them.

Only the cap and gown hung alien on the doorknob to her dresser. It fluttered, barely, in the minimal breeze allowed by the half inch her window was opened. The half inch that should have allowed Dick to easily access the room and fetch them on his way home from patrol.

The hem fluttered in the light breeze, like an omen.

The birds continued to sing.

—

Bruce was no gardener. Generations of servants had always maintained the grounds of the manor to the peak of gardening excellence, keeping it trimmed and immaculate come spring, fall, and everything in between. But his mother had gardened. To this day Bruce insisted on keeping up her small plot himself.

She had kept roses mostly. She had been well aware of the cliche - the beautiful blooms paired with the dangerous thorns. A caricature of her own life. It had been good for character, she had told him, to learn to tend the blossoms while avoiding the thorns. Life lessons learned at the expense of many a childhood booboo.

At seven years old he had promptly killed his first rosebush. She had patted his head and set him up with a little plot of lemon balm - impossible to kill, according to her. The stuff still grew wild about the manor - the bane of the gardeners’ existence.

Bruce had learned a thing or two since then. He had a handful of varieties growing now - this one a Floribunda, that one a Grey Pearl, another a Queen Mab. There was even a Paul Lede for Alfred, who rarely deigned to visit the gardens. Roses made him sneeze.

“If only your friends at Arkham could see you now.”

Bruce wiped sweat from his forehead and looked up at Clark, standing on the path with his hands in his pockets.

“Is that manure you’re spreading?” asked Clark, sounding pleased by the idea.

Bruce sat back on his heels and pointed the trowel at him. “You had better be here to help in the garden.”

“Afraid not,” said Clark. “You know how I hate to get my hands dirty.”

“Here for the graduation, then? Dick will be delighted.”

Clark smiled. “I imagine he’s up in the manor, giving himself the cleanest possible shave?” he asked.

“Still out on patrol.” Bruce stuck his trowel in the ground and stood, wiping his hands on the back of his pants. “Probably working off the nerves.” But there was something grim and unspoken in the way he stood, the way he eyed the plants and not the manor.

“Bit late,” remarked Clarke, observing the sun still coming up, its base just touching the horizon. He pointed at a sad, stunted little bush. “Isn’t this the one he planted?” He stepped off the path to squat and pinch some of the petals. “I remember this color.”

“He hasn’t had time for this particular hobby for a while now,” said Bruce.

“Busy with school and patrol, I’m sure,” said Clark. He looked at Bruce, but the other man didn’t meet his eyes or respond immediately, knocking dirt off his boots.

“Hard to know what he gets up to, these days,” he said finally. He didn’t say what they had already spoken about before (or what little Clark had managed to pry out of him) - that Dick was getting older, that Bruce wasn’t sure if he had earned the independence he was fighting for. It was a delicate topic.

There were more footsteps along the path. Both men looked up to see Alfred on approach. He held not some obligatory tray of refreshments, but a phone. Bruce felt the tension building between his shoulderblades before Alfred spoke a word.

“Miss Gordon on the phone for you, sir,” he said.

“It’s about Dick.”

-

The walls were painted a sickly shade of green. Oil and rust, and what must have been old blood, mingled in staining on the floor, with a few horrifying, dark sprays arced up to the ceiling. Unmarked crates were piled in nearly every square foot of the room. In the back, in a small, free space, there was a small downwards slope with a drain at the base. He could see trails of his own blood leading down into it. The trails were dry.

The bleeding had stopped. That was good.

Everything else was bad.

His arms were so tightly bound that his shoulders ached, and he was numb from his shoulder blades to his fingertips. That was going to hurt like a bitch when he got them free.

He must have been drugged at some point, for he remember nothing of his capture beyond the initial beating. Even now he was fuzzy, when he should have been sharp from the pain, sharp from his training.

 _Water, ice cold,_ he imagined. _Up to your neck. Too cold to feel pain, too cold to feel your limbs, but you know where your hands are. You know how to do this. You’ve done it a million times. You can do it in your sleep. You don’t need to feel your fingers to use your tools…._

But trying to move his hands sent an agonizing up his shoulder and into his neck. He moaned. His lips has been sealed with the dry blood, and they parted with a tearing pop.

“Look who’s awake.”

They emerged from just outside his field of vision. He recognized her voice the same moment he recognized the harlequin mask, and the blue eyes dancing behind them. She squatted in front of him, fingers laced together, and smiled.

“Poor baby bird,” cooed Harley Quinn. She pulled off her mask, revealing the matching clown make-up beneath. One side was smeared, an ugly bruise on her left cheek. “Clipped your wings real good, didn’t they?” She pulled a wet cloth from out of his field of vision, dabbed at his face with a repulsive gentleness. The sympathy in her voice was uncomfortably sincere. He winced, and she dabbed lightly at the fresh blood cracking on his lips.

“As much as I love these little visits,” he managed to croak. “I’m afraid today is bad for me. Can we reschedule?”

She giggled. “Always liked that lil sense of humor you got,” she said, squeezing the cloth off into a pail and rewetting it. “Nothing like your big pal. He’s got no time for chatter. In ’n out and back to Arkham, no fun.”

“You know how this ends,” he said, as she wiped a stubborn fleck of blood from his cheek, and then ran the cloth along the edge of his mask. “Why not cut out the middleman this time, Harley?”

“Actually, that’s just what mistah J had in mind,” she said. “There - good as new.” She dropped the cloth back in the pail. “Don’t worry, we won’t be leavin’ you back here too long. Be back soon - and I’ll bring some friends.” She patted his head and took off with the pail.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” he muttered, when she had gone.

He looked up at the roof, imagined the sky. There were no windows, so he could only imagine what time it was. Guessing by the time he had been taken down and the likely dose he’d been given, he could have anywhere from an hour to twelve to escape certain death and make it to graduation.

_Four years of straight As and advanced placement classes, and here I am._

If the Joker didn’t kill him, Bruce or Babs definitely would.


	6. shelter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just gonna post my snippets as chapters bc
> 
> here is another one
> 
> http://ig2fkr.tumblr.com for updates and other bullshit

“I want to help,” protested Barbara Gordon. She paced Bruce on his way to the Batmobile, taking two steps for each of his. She wasn’t in uniform and had just taken off her bike helmet, leaving her hair comically mussed, but there was nothing funny about her expression.

“No,” said Bruce, hand on the door. Cowl down, he was still in Bat-mode, stormy-eyed and cold-shouldered.

“If he’s in trouble, you’ll want an extra pair of hands,” argued Barbara. “If he’s not in trouble, _I’ll_ want to kick his ass.”

Bruce didn’t laugh. “No,” he said again, more curtly, pulling up the cowl now. “I don’t need two teenagers to worry about right now.”

“He’s got back-up if he needs it, Barbara.” Clark had kept a polite distance in the conversation, and looked both uncomfortable and out of place being in the Cave in his civvies, but now he spoke up. “You don’t have to worry about Dick.”

“I have the _right_ to worry about Dick if I want,” she almost barked at him. She seemed to realize who she was speaking too, and went a little pink, but persisted. “If he’s still just patrolling, I’ll know where to find him, he tells me more about it than you.”

Bruce went still, expression unreadable beneath the cowl. Barbara realized what she had said, and bit her tongue.

“Sir,” said Alfred. His voice was grim. “There’s news.”

They pulled up the image on the Batcave computer, and the picture towered nearly a story high - the logo of a rundown Gotham animal shelter, recently painted over, to that the once cheerful alleycat now held a struggling, masked bird in its claws. A robin.

The cat itself had been painted as well - with a long, laughing red mouth, smeared below two blacked out eyes.


	7. eggnog & explosives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dick is in a not great place

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://ig2fkr.tumblr.com for updates and other bullshit

Sweat poured down his neck. His back screamed from the effort of trying to free himself, and his arms spasmed periodically, making him stop and gasp for air for several minutes each time before he could continue.

Dick didn’t know how close he was to freedom. Every so often he would hear a promising clink, but his hands may have been gloves packed with hamburger for all he could feel.

As he sweated, he tried to reverse himself in time, to think away the pain, to disappear mentally to the first happy time that came.

-

“Merry Christmas.”

Bruce sat on the sofa with a mug and exhausted bags under his eyes. Normally he would sleep well past noon. But today he had indulged Dick unasked (though perhaps with some gentle prompting from Alfred) in getting up at the crack of dawn for this one, special day.

Alfred was uncharacteristically underdressed, in a cozy burgundy nightrobe and (could it be?) fluffy slippers. Bruce was unshaven.

Before them were three stockings, hung above an actual crackling fire - and in a semicircle around that fire, were presents.

Dick flung himself first on Alfred (who was closest) for a crushing hug. Bruce was next, and though he winced (his ribs were still healing from their last bout with Scarecrow), he smiled.

“I don’t suppose there’s any convincing you to eat breakfast before-” Alfred began, but Dick had already seized a stocking.

“Here, look in yours!” He thrust it into Alfred’s chest. It had the initials A.P. clumsily stitched in gold - Dick’s handiwork.

Bruce looked on with great amusement, and Dick with delight, as Alfred pulled out what looked like an old fashioned switchblade. He pressed the button, and a comb popped out the other end.

“Charming,” said Alfred drily. “And what’s this? Ah, yes. Licorice shaped like lumps of coal. How appropriate.”

“Must have had a bad year, Alfred,” said Bruce, sipping his eggnog.

“Now you.” Dick threw himself down on the couch next to Bruce, and dropped the stocking in his lap. This stocking looking much older - well-made, but nearly ratty, as if it had been in use since his childhood.

Bruce pulled out a disturbingly realistic rubber bat.

"Squeeze it," said Dick, and then, unable to resist, reached over and did it himself. The bat gave a high-pitched squeak. "There's also a lot of chocolate."

"I'll treasure it always," said Bruce solemnly. He then handed Dick his own stocking, this one obviously brand new, patched in green, red, and gold.

Dick took it and reached it. He pulled out a crisp yellow notecard. It read ' _Look behind the couch_ ' in neat cursive.

He didn't have to look. Bruce reached over the back of the sofa and brought back a gleaming new helmet, the colors matching green, red, and yellow-gold. He wedged it carefully onto Dick's head.

"The bike is in the cave," he said. "Along with elbow and knee pads. Alfred insisted." Alfred's expression said _Damn right I did._

Dick's face glowed. "Can I-"

"Breakfast first," said Alfred firmly. "Then a proper family photo, and then we'll open the rest of the presents, and _then_ you can crash your bike and scrap the paint and skin your knee all you like."

-

_Snick._

Dick's hands fell free, and he hung then in his lap, hunching forward and gritting his teeth against the sudden rush of blood. His fingers were purple, his wrists dead-white.

However he figured it, he didn't have the luxury of waiting for his arms to recover. He staggered to his feet, and yelped to rediscover the pain in his knee. That's where they had shot him out of the sky. The armor had kept the bullet entering his knee, but he could already tell it would be purple, nearly black, anyway. The shattered armor plate shifted under the suit. Those sharp edges had cut his leg, leaving the damp residue of blood in his boot. But as far as he could tell, there was nothing broken, and nothing spurting blood.

Bruce had taught him never to count on small miracles, but right now, he was damn thankful for them.

He leaned on a crate, peering around the corner into an empty room. There was a door there. Behind it, he could hear a faint, machine thrumming.

Only one thing for it.

He flexed his fingers, pressed his ear to the door for a second, then opened it.

There was just a small laundry room. Some open boxes lay about filled with towels and blankets, some marked CLEAN, and some marked DIRTY. The humming came from a handful of washing machines and driers. A sign on the wall reminded employees and volunteers to wash their hands, and a hand sanitizer dispenser was set on the wall below it.

There was another door to his right. Below the hum and thrum of the washers and driers, Dick heard another noise, one that made his gut tight.

It was the mewling of kittens.

He opened the door, and it opened into a long hallway. On either side of the hall were cages full of kittens - whole litters of them. White, black, spotty, striped, orange, grey, long and short furred. They meowed with the insistence of babies that hadn't been fed recently, and one close to him reached a paw through the bars at him, flexing its little toes.

Piled above and below the cages were stacks of explosives - each marked with an unmistakable, leering Joker grin.

"Oh, shit," said Dick.


	8. a or b

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hooray, they find Robin! Buuut then it's not so great. Just read it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me again  
> posting a thing  
> have fun  
> reading it
> 
> http://ig2fkr.tumblr.com for updates and other bullshit

“Such language,” said a voice - exactly the voice Dick had not wanted to hear.

The Joker emerged leisurely from a doorway. He held a kitten in one hand, and in the other, a detonator with a big red button. “If the Bat were here, I don’t think he’d approve.” He stroked the kitten’s head with one gloved finger.

Dick glared, hands curled into fists, his mind running through all the possibilities. Could he reach the Joker before he could depress that button? _Would_ he press the button?

“Where are the usual wonder-boy witticisms?” asked the Joker. “It’s cheap of me to say it, I know, but - cat got your tongue?”

‘What do you want?” snapped Dick.

“I want you to slip back into these pretty little bracelets.” The Joker left the kitten crawling on top of a crate of explosives, and now he whipped out and dangled a pair of handcuffs from his finger. “The time will come for you to run and play, but not at this point in the game. Not until all the players are on the field.”

Dick ground his teeth.

What choice did he have?

-

Batgirl had tailed the Batmobile all the way to the shelter, and there was no way to stop her without dropping caltrops or something equally dramatic, he knew. He didn’t even bother to order her off the intercom.

He pulled into the alleyway behind the shelter. It was a run-down old building, converted from a warehouse. There were only a few high, solitary windows.

Batgirl was off her bike, helmet away, and at his side before he could shut the car door.

“Are we going in the back?” she asked.

“No other option,” he said. “Drew up the specs in the car. Front entrance is on a main street - too much risk to civilians, traffic.”

The back of the building hosted a pair of iron gray double doors. They had been padlocked, but now the chain and lock lay snipped on the ground before them.

Batman swung the doors open in one grand motion.

The pitch black hall stared back at them. There was a soft, strange noise from within.

Out stepped a dog - a little white dog, with prick ears and a curly tail.

Its eyes bulged from its head. It’s lips were peeled back from its white teeth in a deathly rictus, revealing several inches of brilliant, red, gleaming gums. Grinning.

It panted, and then it gave a high-pitched, agonized cackle and lunged for the batman’s ankles.

He seized it by the scruff and held it up midair. The dog twisted and continued to cackle and shriek, gnashing its teeth. Its thrashing became increasingly frenzied by the second, until something snapped audibly in its neck.

It hung limp. Silence fell in the gray alley, and the black hall before them.

“Joker venom,” said the Batman. He gently let the dog’s corpse rest limp against the wall. “There will be more.”

“That’s sick,” said Barbara. _But not that frightening,_ she _didn't_ say. Batman would be quick to remind her not to underestimate the Joker. The frenzied dog was only a teaser - a kind of ‘hello neighbors!’. He would do worse.

She suppressed a sudden vision - Dick with his eyes bulging behind the mask, teeth and gums bared in the terrifying rictus, tongue tolling out, laughing hysterically. Her gut squeezed.

“Cover my back,” said Bruce curtly, and swept into the hall.

She followed.

They encountered no more dogs in that long hall, passing only open doorways to open rooms, some with sad dirty cages, but no animals. There was no sound but a soft, distant sound, indistinguishable, at the end of the hall.

They reached another set of double doors.

Here light gleamed underneath them. From beyond, the vague sounds solidified into something recognizable. Dogs barking. Laughter. Soft, piping carnival music.

She looked at Bruce and saw his that jawline was hard. His teeth set.

The doors opened for them. They were greeted on the other side by two sullen mimes, holding the doors, welcoming them in with a butlery dip of the head. Beyond them were the usual raucous clowns, one with a foaming terrier latched to their ankle, the rest laughing hysterically.

Beyond them still, caged were stacked on cages, forming an enormous pyramid almost to the high ceiling, built atop what had once been a reception desk. Dogs barked and cowered behind the bars. The characteristic joker goons were still duct taping the final edges of the structure. Atop the whole schema was the Joker himself.

He languished on a precariously-perched, much-chewed armchair, cackling at the goons, but when they entered, he sat upright with a gleam in his eyes. He clanged the visitor bell, claimed from the front desk to the arm of the chair. The ding rang out through the room, over the cacophany of dog’s barking. Silence fell among the goons, who eyed the Batman and his young companion.

“Just on time!" said the Joker. “ _Always_ so reliable. And Batgirl, too. The whole Batfamily, so sweet.”

“Where’s Robin?” said Batman flatly.

“And, as always, right to the sour point, no time for fun and games.” The Joker tsked. “But for once, I’m just as keen - I’m particularly proud of this one, Batman.”

He stood, made a grand gesture. His goons swarmed to the sides of the room, pulling cord on a pair of curtains, revealing the glass walls of two visiting rooms.

In one room, every surface was covered with kittens. They climbed on cat trees. They batted toys. They gamboled around on the floor.

In the other, Robin sat in a chair, arms tied behind him.

He was still masked, still costumed, but both were slashed. His face was brutalized under the mask. Fresh blood dripped from his lip. He bore every sign of a thorough battering with blunt instruments. But he was awake, alert, his eyes glowering. His whole body was ready and taut with anger.

Batman did not react. Batgirl tried not to. She met Dick’s gaze for a moment - there was a flicker of surprise to see her, then complete unspurrise, and then he spat blood on the ground and grinned at her. Blood filled the lines between his teeth.

In both rooms, glass cubes dangled from the ceiling.

Dogs were in them.

Big dogs.

They pawed at the glass, or barked (the sound lost behind the soundproofing), but were otherwise calm. Normal.

“You see in front of you, two rooms,” said the Joker, projecting like a grand announcer, holding a chew toy up to his mouth like a megaphone. “In one corner, God’s most innocent creatures. In the other, Batman’s most precious (or should I say precocious?) comrade. But wait! There’s more.”

Another grand gesture.

Visible green gas jetted into both cubes, ballooning among the dogs. They sneezed, shook their heads, ducked and scratched at their noses. And then their lips began to peel back.

“You have a choice, Batman.”

The Joker leapt down to a nearer tier of his makeshift pyramid, pups yapping at his ankles, pulling two hand-held electronic devices from within his purple jacket.

“Button A.” He held it, clearly marked, in the air. “Drops the dogs in with the wee kitty cats.”

The cackling screams of the dogs could be heard now, even through the sound proofed glass.

“Button B.” Again, clearly marked. “Drops the dogs in with the Boy Wonder. He might survive the mauling, sure, he’s faced worse, but not the venom _maimed_ into him.” The Joker’s grin was grotesque. “That’ll be a fun death - key flesh ripped out of him, teeth in his throat, madness climbing up his spinal column to snap his neck.”

The clown prince of crime leered.

“Your choice.”

He waggled them tantalizingly, and then tossed them in a neat arc to the Batman. “Oh, and to make sure you choose.” As if in an afterthought. He pulled out one last controller. “If you don’t pick one or the other in thirty seconds, _this_ button will open them both.” He waggled it.

And then he yanked a cord. A cloth fell from atop a cage - within that cage, a bright red timer began to blink.

00:30

00:29


	9. donate time to your local animal shelter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I boned up a lot of the action sequence stuff but I don't care because none of you care right
> 
> enjoy some Emotions
> 
> http://ig2fkr.tumblr.com for updates and other bullshit

There was a second of solid silence.

And then things happened very quickly.

Batgirl launched herself at the Joker. He scrambled backwards, barking "Goons!", and they came leaping to his aid. Batgirl's boot collided with one's jaw with a solid _sock_ , and another she flipped over her head. He skidded off the platform. Chaos, as the Joker clambered back up his pyramid, the dogs howled, and Batgirl was swarmed by the goons.

Batman stood stock still. He looked at the buttons, one in each hand, and, slowly, he looked at Robin.

Dick stared back. To any other eyes, the Bat would have been impossible to read, but suddenly, Dick's eyes blazed.

He broke his bonds in an instant, if they had ever held his tricky hands in the first place. Heedless of what injuries he had incurred, he seized the chair, brought it over his head in an arc. The chair flew through the air to smash into the cube.

Glass flew and frothing, chattering, snarling dogs scattered to the ground. They scrambled up and were at him in a wave. Batgirl was allowed only a glance as she fought, Joker giving a howl to see his game so rerouted, Batman’s gaze fixed on the glass as he moved for the boarded-up door, as if he could break it down bare-handed.

There was a massive crash. Dust flew as wall collapsed, glass tinkling. Sunlight flooded into the small, boarded up visiting room. Rising above the dust was Superman - holding Robin out of the reach of the leaping, shrieking hounds.

“No fair!” yelled the Joker. He moved to pound his third button, but with the goons distracted, Batgirl had reached him. She snatched the device and punched him in the face in one neat motion. He toppled over backwards. He clutched his face, howling now in pain as well as out of rage.

The goons all swapped glances and fled.

Batman let them go. Gordon’s men had been alerted back in the batmobile and he could hear their sirens now, through the hole Clark had punched in the building.

He disarmed the Joker’s device, let Batgirl wrestle the cursing clown into handcuffs and haul him down his pyramid. Already he could see the envenomed dogs beginning to expire. They were spasming to the ground, eyes rolling in their heads, tongues shaking. They went flat-faced against the glass.

The kittens, oblivious to the averted threat, continued to play. One gray kitten observed the scene through the glass, solemn-faced, at the very top of his cat tree.

-

Outside, the goons had been taken into the waiting hands of the police. The news crews and curious public swarmed behind them. Batman let Batgirl deliver the Joker herself. She would get the night’s headline, possibly a photo op with one of the kittens. The public would be charmed, potential adopters would swarm the shelter. Their cages would be empty within the week. And full again by the end of the month.

Clark was waiting for him at the car, far from the cameras. Dick stood by. He had peeled off his mask, one hand on the hood of the batmobile, washing blood off of his face.

Bruce seized him by the collar. Dick let himself be dragged forward, dropping his water bottle. The water slopped out onto the dirty ground.

“What were you thinking?” Bruce spoke through gritted teeth.

“Bruce….” said Clark. He was ignored.

Dick met Bruce's gaze coolly. He had anticipated this anger. Anticipated. Acted anyway.

“I did what I had to do.”

Bruce had made a fist with his other hand. He could see again the snarling dogs; saw, strangely, Dick as a laughing child, superimposed over the face of the bloody and resentful teenager before him. Bruce couldn’t stop a vision of his contorted corpse from rising up over that.

“Stupid, self sacrificing-“

“It wasn’t stupid,” said Dick. Interrupting. Disobedient. “And it wasn’t self-sacrificing. I knew Superman would be there.” His voice was too even, a mismatch with his eyes, with the defiant jut of his chin. Too measured. Too ready for this confrontation. Anticipated. Bruce’s grip tightened on his collar. “It’s my graduation.”

Bruce's hands slackened.

He saw with clarity again. Dick’s face, bruised. The trembling of suppressed pain in his arms. The late hour light on the wall. Clark behind him, worry naked on his face. Dick's slow, calculated breathing, the breathing of care taken for broken ribs.

Bruce released him.

“Your injuries?” Dull-voiced.

“Bruises,” said Dick. “That’s all.”

He was lying. Clark was trying to tell Bruce so in a significant look over Dick’s shoulder.

“Take him home,” said Bruce to Clark. “It’ll be faster.” To Dick he said, “Get cleaned up and have Aflred take a look. I’ll meet you at the ceremony when I’m done here.”

He turned and swept away. If Dick was bad hurt, Alfred wouldn’t let him out of the cave. Then Dick and his friends wouldn’t have to notice Bruce Wayne showing up late to the ceremony, Bruce Wayne ostentatious among all the regular parents and guardians, at the plain high school Dick had fought to attend, as ostentatious as the bruises on Dick’s face and the cool silence between them, the bruises that Dick would laughingly excuse as he had excused all the other broken arms, blackened eyes, contused lips, casts, stitches, limps.

_’Does he ever hit you?’_

Bruce got in his car and gunned it out of the alley. As the batmobile screamed down the street, he kept one hand on the wheel, the other on his thigh, opening and closing into a convulsive fist, over and over again.


	10. graduation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ppl contemplating the future, probably not gonna b a good one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this all in one class period & typed it in another  
> im a responsible student
> 
> http://ig2fkr.tumblr.com for updates and other bullshit

They sat on the hood of Babs’s car, watching the sun set over the gloomy cityscape. Red danced on the glass of the skyscrapers, and a burst of upflown birds were lost in the final, fading sliver of the sun. It flashed one last time and it was gone. The crimson faded to purple. The stars glinted only a little through the smog. More strongly came the city lights from below, the crash and flash of streets, clubs, the florescent warning of a police car in pursuit.

“No patrol tonight,” said Babs drily, feeling Dick stir beside her.

“No ma’am,” he said, ruefully, and turned his graduation cap in his hands, tassel dangling.

“I still can’t believe you actually went,” she said. “How’d you get Alfred to let you out of the house?”

“Puppy dog eyes.” He grinned. “And didn’t hurt that he’s been thirsting after that graduation photo for years. If I’d been in the hospital in a full body cast, he probably still would have come and jammed the cap on my head for a photo.”

Babs took the cap from his hands and gently replaced it on his bruised head. “You do look very handsome in it,” she said.

“How handsome?” he asked, batting his eyelashes and leaning in.

“Those puppy eyes won’t work on me,” she said, putting a hand on his chest. “Particularly not when one of them is swollen shut.”

“Is it pretty bad, isn’t it?” He grimaced and leaned back. “Man though, did you see their faces?” He chuckled.

“They weren’t laughing,” she said. “Neither am I, frankly. You’re running out of good excuses.”

“You don’t think being beaten up and having my bike stolen is a good excuse?”

“I think that’s the third time you’ve used that one.”

He sighed, laid back on the hood of the car. “At least I won’t have to make excuses at school anymore.”

Babs pulled up her knees, hugged them to her chest, looked at Dick’s crutches lying in the grass.

“What are you going to do, Dick?”

He said nothing, only furrowed his brow, and pulled the cap down over his eyes.

-

There was a fire crackling in Wayne manor, one of those only lights in a house that had fallen cold and quiet in the night.

Any other night he would be someone else, somewhere else, a dark lingerer on the rooftops, but tonight, Bruce Wayne sat on his couch and stared into the flames. The deep furrow of his brow and the shadows dancing on his face made him look like a very different creature.

“The League’s offer still stands,” said Clark Kent.

He stood, near the wall, leaving Bruce alone on his couch.

“Even after tonight?” Bruce didn’t look away from the flickering flames.

“Moreso, actually.” Clark stopped polishing his glasses to regard his friend. Bruce’s hard, bent shoulders were a wall. The man was unreadable. “They believe he demonstrated admirable foresight, calculation, and, ah, I believe 'gumption' was the word.”

“‘Gumption’,” repeated Bruce, his voice distorted with angry disbelief.

“He wouldn’t be a senior member, obviously. Little would have to change in your relationship. But we think-”

“ _You_ think.” Bruce stood now, glaring daggers at Clark over the back of the couch. “You think you know him? You, you and the League, you think he’s ready? You think he needs more encouragement, more justification to risk his life?”

“Bruce-”

“You think, _he_ thinks that if he looks like a man, he must be a man, that if he’s fast enough that nothing can touch him, that if he’s clever enough nothing can hurt him-”

“I can have the offer revoked,” said Clark quietly. “He doesn’t have to know there was one.”

Bruce’s eyes fixed on the flames once more.

“And then, what?” continued Clark, tone mild. “He’ll go to college, I expect. He should. He’s brilliant. Sure, you can get him any degree he likes down in your cave, can teach him any subject under the sun. But he could be on a campus. Out in the light. Charm his professors. Meet a girl - meet a boy. Live a life. A real one.”

Bruce had sunk back into his seat, put his hands over his eyes.

_He’s not ready._

_**Who's** not ready?_

Clark put a hand on his shoulder.

“I know,” he said. “It’s not an easy decision to make.”

“It’s not my decision to make,” said Bruce mutely into his palm. He swept Clark’s hand off his shoulder, stood again. He made to leave the room.

“He can’t make that decision alone, Bruce,” said Clark. His voice was horribly gentle.

Bruce stood in the doorway, rubbing his neck.

“Are you heading back to Metropolis?” he asked, after there had been a silence. The fire crackled.

“I don’t have to,” said Clark.

“Then don’t,” said Bruce.

They put out the fire. Darkness fell over the manor, just as it had fallen over the rest of the city, a darkness warm as the dying embers, a darkness full of tepid wind that was like breathing. The in and out of the sucking city. Quiet came to no corner of Gotham (and it never would) but eventually, there was sleep.


	11. hickey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> things keep popping into bedrooms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i typed this in logic class again  
> i got a D+ on my test  
> a D+ you guys!!  
> that's like 2 plus & minus points away from a failing grade  
> I'm amazing at school  
> what is a tree table  
> what is a tree  
> http://ig2fkr.tumblr.com for updates and other bullshit

The window had been left open a crack.

The sounds of the city were a faint background trickling in. A breeze. The smell of the gardens, wafting in.

Dick slept soundly, his mouth slightly open. His chest rose and fell, deeply, slowly.

The shades fluttered, dappling moonlight on the pictures on his nightstand, the book left open, flat and spine-up. Alfred would have chided him.

The moonlight faded away.

Something obscured the light through the window crack. Something small - but not small enough. Its shadow loomed against the wall, over the photographs. The shadow fell over Dick’s face.

It plopped down upon the floor, freeing the light.

The shades rustled.

The room was still and quiet.

But there was a soft shuffling along the floor.

At the foot of the bed.

Little clawed toes carefully climbed the rich bedspread, mounted the bed, advanced past the lumps of his feet beneath the sheets. It climbed his prone body, claws ticking on the buttons of his nightshirt, until it reached his throat.

The vein was prominent in the moonlight - overly prominent. His sleeping pulse was almost loud. It _was_ loud.

The creature fastened itself on his shoulders, fluttered its wings for balance, fanning them out over his face, his twitching eyelids. It buried its teeth in his vein.

His fingertips twitched.

His mouth opened.

Blood ran down his throat, first in thin rivulets and then in a rapid stream, soaking into the sheets.

There was a disturbance, and then the creature lifted its eyes to the level of the unseen observer, opened its bloody mouth, and the bat screamed.

-

Bruce woke with a start.

Sunlight was streaming over the bed, the windows were open, and birds were singing gaily just outside of them. A headache pinged violently just above his eyebrow. He grimaced, sat up, ground his forehead into his palm. He ran his hand over his face, down to his neck, pressing it into the fresh bruise at the base of his throat.

“Sorry about that,” said Clark. He stood at the foot of the bed half-dressed, hair mussed, looking like an odd compromise between his two identities. Nearly-buttoned dress shirt, alien muscle rippling underneath, glasses lost somewhere in the room. Probably somewhere in the tangle of the sheets. “Bad dreams?” he guessed. Usual tentative morning overture. A self-conscious attempt at maintaining intimacy would follow. Something about breakfast.

Bruce left the bed, pulled on a robe, looked out the window. Dick’s bike was pointedly gone from its usual spot. He doubted it was in the garage being tinkered on. His forehead twinged more violently.

Clark found his glasses on the floor by the foot of the bed, bent and picked them up. The frames had bent. He eased them back into place. “How do you feel about-?” He put his glasses on and turned as he spoke, but Bruce was already gone. Likely to the cave, and to work.

“Breakfast?” suggested a familiar, but entirely unexpected voice from the window.

Clark turned to find, perched on the window, holding two coffees and a bag wafting the smell of pastries, a dark-haired woman. She was clad not in her usual iron bodice and boots, but a business casual shirt and skirt, at odds with her apparently having flown three stories to pop in on Bruce Wayne’s bedroom.

“Diana,” he said, surprised.

“If you’re not hungry, I can eat both of these,” said Wonder Woman. “But we do need to talk.”


	12. cruller

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wonder Woman and Superman eat things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey team! How ya doin? Ya doin good?
> 
> I haven't updated in a while, not because I haven't written anything, but because I've been too lazy/stressed/bored/tired to type them up. I actually have a crapton written but will be trying to space them out a bit. Here's the first next chapter, hope u enjoy really really short things.
> 
> (also, I don't know shit about WW's bg, so I'm having her using the Diana Prince alias. If that's totally bogus don't correct me i dont' care)
> 
> http://ig2fkr.tumblr.com for updates and other bullshit

They ate their breakfast out in the gardens, in a less ostentatious corner on a bench under a tree. It was one of the older trees on the property. Clark could remember Dick climbing to the highest branches, dangling by his ankles, pretending to fall until Alfred ordered him down and gave him the sternest of stern lectures.

"You just have a hankering for the Gotham branch of Starbucks, or are you in town for a reason?" asked Clark, picking out a croissant.

"'Diana Prince' has a conference this afternoon," she said. "But I'm just here for the baked goods. That, and League business."

"Serious enough to warrant a briefing in person?" he asked. "Or, un-serious enough?" His tone hoped it was the latter.

"It's bad," she said. She swept a crumb off her lap. "They found fresh blood up north."

His croissant lost some of its savor.

"It's back?"

"We don't know for sure," she said. "We need Batman."

"Of all the bad timing," he muttered, more to his lap than making an argument.

"It can't be helped," she said, in that severe-yet-gentle way that only she could manage.

"He's not gonna be happy," he said, and then thought, perhaps not. What better way to escape the tension brewing in Bruce's own household than a mission to the arctic circle?

She dropped the bag with the last of the pastries in his lap.

"Give him a cruller," she said. "Bad news is better with donuts."


	13. babysitter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dick causes a ruckus at a gas station

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't updated this in months because I was writing it during my relg 181 class, and then I stopped that class, and lost the notebook with the latest chapter. But then guess what I found! Hopefully will be continuing this still, have to reread and remember where I was going with it, but here is that latest chapter for anyone who is still remotely invested. Peace
> 
> http://ig2fkr.tumblr.com for updates and other bullshit

Dick peeled off his shirt, wincing as it plucked at young scabs, and dropped it to pool on the floor. Hands on either side of the sink, he leaned in to examine his own reflection, searching for new marks, and traipsing down the memory lane of scars and lumpily healed bone.

The gas station lighting made the sight grimmer. Every injury had felt individually minor - and at first, they had been minor.

The lump of a once-broken elbow - a clumsy landing.

A scar from jagged glass, a broken window.

Clumsy injuries, but inevitable ones.

He had thought there might be a new gash, something unfelt in the lightning fast thrill of combat. But nope. Nothing new. Just a tiny, swelling ding to the lower lip. A testament to those years of painful experience.

He felt satisfied.

He felt unrepentant.

His phone was ringing - a particular tone, the one he was never supposed to ignore, the tone that brought the phone to his ear out of pure instinct.

Silence for a second, then an intimately familiar breath.

“Where are you?”

“Gassing up.”

“Come home. We need to talk.” Bruce hung up.

Dick had a funny taste in his mouth. It was a taste distinct from the iron tang of blood, the faint spot of it in his mouth where one of them had dinged him.

He finished washing his face, cold water, blood still warm with adrenaline, and he pulled his shirt back on and left the bathroom.

The would-be thugs sat sullenly where he had left them. Their hands were tied behind their backs, guns set neatly on the counter out of reach.

The station owner stopped Dick for a firm handshake on his way out the door. The man mimed a one-two punch and said, heavily accented, “You are like that, ah, Batman.” He flapped his hands like little bat wings.

“The guns weren’t actually loaded,” Dick pointed out, dodging the comparison. To the cuffed men, he said. “If you’re really short on cash, you are hiring.” He tapped the sign saying so on the gas station door.

That door swung shut behind him with a cheerful ding, and he met Barbara at their bikes, pulling on his helmet. “No help for a poor half-crippled boy?” he asked, mockingly probing for sympathy.

“Did you get my coke?” she asked, then touched her chin. “Looks like one of them tapped you.”

He tossed her the bottle. “I can only hope that you’ll love me still, now that my flawless facade has been compromised.” He swung his leg over the bike. “You get the call?”

“Indeed I did.” She buckled her helmet. “Surprise graduation party, you think?”

“If there isn’t a bat-shaped cake waiting for me at the cave, I’ll be extremely disappointed.”

-

_It comes in the dreams and then in the flesh. God willing we have burnt it out, but one of the men is still unaccounted for. And I cannot remember my dreams now._

“It’s a rough translation,” said the voice from the screen. “But the rest of the watchkeepers have fallen silent since then, and with that and this message, well, it doesn’t look good.”

Bruce, clad only in a bathrobe and a pair of bat-themed boxers (one of Dick’s old Christmas presents), still cut an intimidating figure with that grim look on his face.

He was eating his cruller with the single-minded lack of enjoyment characteristic of a man eating for sustenance, not for pleasure. There was an almost empty mug of coffee sitting next to him. That, too, bore a little bat signal. Another joke gift, made in Dick’s pottery class, years ago. Required practical art credit.

“False alarm or not, we have protocol for this,” he said. He rubbed the stubble on his chin, leaving behind a faint dusting of powdered sugar, not noticing. “Doesn’t matter if it’s a drunk Swede drooling on the keyboard or a dead watchman. We go.”

“Diana said you’re wanted immediately,” said Clark. He stood aside with crossed arms, with that I’m-not-saying-what’s-really-bothering-me pucker between his eyebrows, leaning on the wall.

“I’ll take the jet, be there by six.”

“Planning a vacation without me?”

Dick emerged, helmet on hip. His tone was jovial but his eyes were not.

Bruce squared on him, jaw set to lecture. For a moment their expressions were identical. Then Bruce looked away.

“The situation in the arctic circle has re-arisen,” he said, eyes on the screen again.

That seemed to take Dick by surprise. “It has?”

“No confirmation,” said Clark. Not helpfully, going by the look Bruce shot him.

“I’m going to confirm it.”

“And you need me to watch the city while you’re away,” guessed Dick.

“No,” said Bruce. “I don’t.”

Dick was silent for a moment. Then, “Come again?”

“I said no.” Bruce’s face was rapidly losing expression, but Clark could see a tiny, swift-ticking vein kicking in his temple. “I’m arranging for-”

“Why not?”

“I’m arranging for a representative of the League to be present,” continued Bruce, as if he hadn’t been interrupted.

“I don’t need a babysitter,” said Dick. An angry flush was growing on his cheeks.

“This isn’t about-”

“Don’t lie to me about what this about,” snapped Dick. He chucked his helmet away into a corner. The angry rattle echoed through the cave.

Bruce did not tolerate this second interruption. He turned on his ward. “You’ll do as you’re told,” he snarled. “You’ll do your job, you’ll follow your orders, and if I think you’ve earned some piece of information, then I’ll tell you.”

Even in the face of Bruce’s open anger, Dick did not back down.

“‘Earned it’?” He repeated, half laughing and incredulous. “What haven’t I earned, Bruce? What else do I have to do to prove myself to do?” His last words had an ugly, bitter sound.

“Is that what all of this has been about?” snapped Bruce. He turned, got out of the chair, and advanced. “The solo runs, the little disobediences, the bravado.” He seized Dick’s arm to shove up his sleeve, revealing his stitched and bruised forearm, the splinted fingers. “The injuries?” He cupped Dick’s face, not gently, but accusingly, turning his blackened eyes up to the light. “Is this how you prove yourself? Prove what? Your youth? Your idiocy? Your headfirst willingness to get yourself killed?”

Dick jerked away from him. There was a strange eagerness in his eyes, almost an elation at having brought Bruce out of his chair, out of his cold professionalism and into a fight.

“‘Bravado’,” he echoed. “‘Headfirst willingness to get myself killed’? Gee, I wonder where I could have learned that.”

Bruce’s hands, curled into fists, twitched and fell slack. As abruptly as he had advanced on Dick, he broke away from him, sunk back into his chair. He faced the monitor.

“Go get cleaned up,” he said, with a new dullness in his voice. “You’ll be briefed on the situation after.”

Dick opened his mouth to pursue the fight, but then Clark’s hand landed on his shoulder. “I still haven’t given you your graduation gift,” said Clark. It was not a subtle diffusion of the situation, but Dick did shut his mouth and meet his eyes. “Come and see?”

Dick let himself be placated for the moment. He looked back at Bruce only once as they left the cave, and his gaze fell last upon the mug, that clumsily made mug with the tiny fluttering bat printed on it.


	14. the balrog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dick gets his graduation present. no, it isn't sex, fuck off moira fuck you and your audiologist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another update! i liked this when i was writing it but now i hate it. general trigger warning for gross body horror things
> 
> Also General Update: for anybody curious who read the other parts, I'm not in school anymore. I still have to go back eventually but w/e. I'm working fulltime and by that I mean I'm sitting in an office 40 hours a week pretending to test software while I'm actually fantasizing about superheroes. good shit! i'm a fucking adult
> 
> http://ig2fkr.tumblr.com for updates and other bullshit

The kitchen found Barbara leaning on the counter with a cup of tea, chatting with Alfred. They both clammed up as soon as Dick and Clark emerged from the hall. Alfred’s face was blank of any intrigue, but Barbara had a barely suppressed tight lip of a smile that suggested a surprise party was in the works.

“All quiet in the belfry?” she asked.

“As quiet as ever,” said Dick.

Clark spoke over the counter to Alfred, giving chipped only the finer points. “The arctic circle may be active again; he’s jetting up to investigate.”

“'The arctic circle'?” repeated Barbara.

“I’ll make the arrangements,” said Alfred airily, showing himself out. He knew this story.

Clark went around the counter to make himself a cup of tea. “In 1973, a handful of geologists were up there taking ice core samples. I forget what for - something about tectonic plates or climate change patterns, maybe.” He sat on a stool and dropped two sugar cubes pensively into his mug. “But they delved too deep, and too greedily.”

“Isn’t that from Lord of the Rings?” Barbara frowned.

Clark stirred the sugar into his tea with no change in expression but a single lifted eyebrow. “Do you want to hear what happened or not?”

“That’s definitely from Fellowship of the Ring,” Barbara said in an aside to Dick.

“It shouldn’t surprise you that way they found was alien,” said Clark. “It surprised them. When they figured it out, they were ecstatic. The discovery of a lifetime. They assumed they would be on every newscover across the world, win the Nobel prize. But none of them made it out - alive, at least.” His brow furrowed. He stirred his tea a little too long, coming to some dark brink in his story.

“Well?” probed Barbara. “What exactly did they find?”

Clark sipped his tea. “You’ve seen the movies. Tongue of fire, great black wings, pretty much your classic balrog.”

Barbara gave a massive roll of her eyes and slid off her stool. “I’m gonna go help Alfred with the jet.”

“Laters Babs.” Dick claimed her stool. “You know she’s going to grill me for details out of my paygrade later, right?” he asked when she had gone.

“She can find them in the same classified files you did,” said Clark. “I’m sure Bruce will pretend not to notice her clumsy hacking, either.”

“I’m the clumsy hacker, not Babs,” said Dick. “This time tomorrow she’ll know more than both of us and he’ll be none the wiser.”

“We’ll see about that,” said Clark, sipping his tea. “Anyway. About that graduation present.”

“I _was_ hoping for a vacation in the arctic circle, but that dream has been crushed,” said Dick.”I can’t imagine what else I would want.”

Clark reached into his pocket, pulled out a small box, and set it on the counter between them without a word.

Dick eyed him for a moment. For once, Clark’s face gave nothing away. Neither did the box. It was plain, black. Unwrapped, which said that it had never passed through Alfred’s hands. Small enough to-

“Would you stop analyzing and just open the box?” asked Clark. “I swear, you two would spend a day trying to puzzle your way through an open door.”

Dick almost laughed, but found he could only quirk his lips as he took the box. There wasn’t even a ribbon holding it closed. He took off the lid.

Inside was a watch.

An antique, it looked like. Intricate design. Burnished with age but well cared for.

He had a funny feeling.

“This isn’t from you.”

“No,” said Clark gently.

Dick picked up the watch. Underneath it was a note, folded up. _Dick_ was written in a familiar hand.

“Nabbed it from his dresser drawer yesterday,” said Clark. “I think he planned on giving it to you after the ceremony. I’m sure, once he pulls his head out of his ass, he’ll regret not having given it to you on time.”

Dick didn’t say anything. He unfolded the note.

_Dick,_

_What do you get the boy wonder who has everything? Almost had Lucius design a sidecar for the car, but I don’t think you’d fit now. Yes, that was a joke._

_This was my father’s watch. He told me that when I was older it would belong to me. I got it sooner than planned, so I don’t know what age he would have thought was old enough. But at this point I’m not sure what else you could do to prove yourself a man._

_I’m proud of you  
Bruce_

-

The refugee capsule was a small pod at the end of the arctic complex. Meant as temporary housing before help arrived, it was designed for security rather than comfort. It was cold, and rigid.

Hudson and Patel huddled under a blanket in one corner. Rivera was still busy with the equipment. The cold, dry air had given him a vicious nosebleed, but that didn’t stop him from trying to get a signal out. Any signal.

“I have to piss,” announced Torani.

“Nobody goes anywhere alone,” said Rivera automatically, without looking up. “Hudson, go with her.”

“I don’t want him watching me,” she said.

“There are no other women-”

“Not that,” she said impatiently. “ _He_ was with it last.”

“I’m not-” began Hudson heatedly.

“You were the only one out of containment when Carol disappeared,” she snapped.

“I’ll go, I’ll go,” said Patel, defusing the situation with a wave of his hands. “I’m your doctor, I’ve seen it all anyway.”

“What, we’re going to leave him alone with Rivera and our only contact with the outside world?”

Hudson was pale, either with fear, or anger, or the cold, or all three, and opened his mouth to snap again. Patel placated. They argued over top of each other.

Rivera whipped off the headphones. “Should we all go to the toilet together?” he snapped.

“The three of us will go,” said Patel, his last attempt at making peace. “We know Rivera is clean.”

Torani seemed satisfied by that. She gave Rivera a sympathetic squeeze on the shoulder. “Nosebleed slowup any yet?”

“I’m fine.” He waved her away.

They left him at the controls, one hand on the dial, the other stemming his nose.

After a minute he sniffed - a loud, snotty nose. The cuff of his sleeve was almost soaked. He fumbled after a rag.

He took his sleeve away, glanced down, and did a horrified double-take.

The fresh blood wasn’t blood. It was a viscous, shining black green. New drops oozed out and dripped into his lap.

He heard a gentle crunching noise.

He pulled off the headset and reached up, tremblingly, to touch the back of his head. He felt the clump of thick, outcropping cartilage nested there. Touching the mass, he felt it slowly expanding its spines through his hair, into his scalp. Its feelers plucked over his fingers with extreme delicacy. He heard it now - a louder crunch, as it broke through the skull and inserted itself into the braincase.

He opened his mouth to scream.

A branch of black cartilage forced its way through the back of his throat, over the tongue and out the mouth, expanding upwards to the artificial light, like a flower in the sun.


	15. monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gotham's finest welcome a new face to town.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact, I've had this typed for weeks, but typing it up is always a pain in the ass, and then I had surgery, so I've spent the last week lying propped up in bed stoned on hydrocodone, unable to shower, still stained with iodine, barely able to walk to the bathroom without passing out. fun! but I typed it now.
> 
> I have another (shorter) chapter typed up and may post that within the next week.
> 
> I've also created a tumblr, so follow for updates and occasional comic reblogs
> 
> http://ig2fkr.tumblr.com/

“You get that door yet Ruby?”

The girl in the braids, one eyes squinched shut, the other intent on the lock she was picking, had a drop of sweat roll off her chee. “Shut. Up.” She gritted through her teeth.

The first girl scowled, crowbar resting on her shoulders. “I don’t see why we couldn’t have smashed a window.”

“Burglar alarms,” said the boy. He was wearing glasses, the light from his phone reflecting off the lenses, and drinking a Monster. “Also, these are new sneakers.”

“Are you texting?”

“Snapchat.”

“Are you serious? Do you _want_ to leave evidence we were here?”

“Chill Luce, it’s not like I’m taking pictures of the street signs or anything. Besides, they only last for 24 hours.”

“Hey actually I have a question about that,” said an unfamiliar voice. There was a gentle footfall on the rooftop. “Is there a way to delete awkward pictures that you’ve sent to the wrong person?”

The three kids looked up.

A man knelt on the edge of the roof just above. A green glow surrounded him, illuminating their corner of the alleyway, his mask, his short and slightly wind-ruffled brown hair.

He jumped down from the roof, floating to a light footfall in front of them.

The glow dissipated. “I know this isn’t how Batman does it, but you see like an okay couple of kids, so let’s just do this the easy way and-”

The can of Monster hit him directly in the face. The kids scrambled, shouting “Get the fuck outta here!”. They were up and over the fences, sprinting down the streets before he had the chance to wipe energy drink off his face.

“That’s why Batman doesn’t do that,” said a new voice.

He looked up at a girl perched on the same roof he had just vacated. She was wearing the usual grim bat-garb that marked her as one of the clan, her red hair loose around her shoulders and a smile on her face.

“Great,” he said, mopping his chin. “You not gonna go after them?”

She shrugged and hopped down. “They’re just kids.” She put out her hand. “Batgirl.”

He appraised her, almost a full foot shorter than he was, and decided (probably wisely) not to comment on her own youth. He shook her hand. “Green Lantern. Where’s the rest of the welcome wagon?”

“Back at the cave. Batman would have come himself, but he said, what was it - something about ‘’better things to do’?”

He blinked. After a moment, he said, “You know, I have no idea if you’re joking.”

She laughed and did not clarify. “Come on. I’ll show you the way to the cave.”

“Please tell me it’s not through the creepy spider-infested tunnel.”

She was already hopping away over the roofs. “This is Gotham, GL,” she called back. “There is no easy way.”

He wrung the final drop of Monster morosely off his front.

“I hate this fucking city,” he said to the empty alleyway.

 

-

 

Bruce eyed the prototypes without seeing them, his mind someplace very far away, and very cold.

Any other day, Alfred would have tolerated this with his usual resignation. Today, he snapped his fingers sharply in front of Bruce’s face.

Bruce looked up, affronted.

“Master Lucius needs your input before you leave on your ill-advised trip to the north. Or shall I tell him you couldn’t choose, and to develop all the models?”

Bruce rubbed his temples. “We established these protocols years ago, Alfred.”

“I didn’t like them then and I don’t like them now. And I like these even less.” He indicated the prototypes with a restrained but deeply distasteful pointed finger.

They were an array of gauntlets, the exposed inner mechanisms suggesting something more exotic than body armor.

“You have a problem with the remote control?”

“I have a problem with what that remote capability allows you to do.”

Alfred was standing reproachfully, hands on hips, like a mother waiting for a child to guess their crime.

“It allows functionality in the case of extreme injury, or temporary paralysis or disability,” said Bruce, failing to find anything wrong with that.

“And I’m sure that’s where you’ll leave it,” said Alfred, in a tone that suggested he was sure of the exact opposite. “Not use it to enable you to keep up the work in the case of more permanent injury, even something disabling - say, old age?”

Bruce steepled his fingers and looked silently at Alfred over top of them.

“Don’t pretend the thought hasn’t crossed your mind,” said Alfred, more airily, now that he had made his point.

“I have a job to do,” said Bruce. “I have a duty to this city.”

“You have a duty to yourself, and to the people who care about you,” said Alfred. “Not to push yourself to the brink, to your last remaining limb. There are others to continue your work.”

“ _Don’t_ say Dick,” said Bruce heatedly.

“God knows I don’t relish the thought of either of you out there,” said Alfred “But I relish the thought of you, still fighting this war when you’re old and grey, even less.”

“Company’s here.” Barbara’s voice came over the intercom.

“Thank god.” Bruce pushed himself away from the table, then paused to look at the gauntlets once more. “Tell Lucius to develop the second. The rest can go into storage.”

“Very well,” said Alfred, boxing them dutifully away.

“-most of this system’s pretty drab honestly, you need to get past Alpha Centauri for habitable atmospheres or a decent drink. And don’t get me started on the frozen yogurt situation. Hundreds of light years from home, you wouldn’t think you’d miss it, but there I was, in the thick of it with a bunch of Clearians, and all I could think of was how I was never going to taste the pineapple whip from the Pinkberry across the street again.”

“Gotham has a nice Pinkberry,” Barbara said as she came into view, a Green Lantern bringing up the rear.

“It’s a front for smugglers, but you’re in luck,” said Bruce, by way of greeting. “Since I’m headed out of town they’ll be in operation for at least another week.”

“Heya Bruce.” Ring deactivated, Hal wore jeans and a bomber jacket, hands in pockets. “Love what you’ve done with the place. Lot fewer cobwebs in the ol’ tunnel this time.”

“Master Hal,” said Alfred cordially. “Can I can you something to drink? No frozen yogurt, I’m afraid.”

“No thanks, Alfred,” said Hal. “I’m here, I’m ready to work.” He rubbed his hands together. “Whaddya got for me?”

“Ten o’clock press conference with the mayor,” said Bruce without looking up from his computer. “Then periodic flyovers, every three hours, to ensure the public knows you’re here.”

“...then?”

“No ‘then’. Robin and Batgirl will take care of any low level crime, and your presence will act as a deterrent to the more dangerous element until I return. If anything happens, contact me, or the League, before you act. And ensure that _they_ exercise the same restraint in the case of emergency.” Bruce shot Barbara a look.

She widened her eyes innocently, as if to say, ‘Who, me?’.

“So, puff press piece, air show, and babysitting.” Hal leaned on the desk, counting the tasks on his fingers. “When I finish my chores can I watch Desperate Housewives on the big screen?” He jabbed his thumb at the enormous monitor.

Bruce opened his mouth, frowned, and sniffed the air.

“Why do you smell like a frat house?”


	16. alien emoji

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Babs makes a new friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this a week (two weeks? three weeks?) ago and totally neglected to type up or post it oops. I am still writing this thing! Just recovering from surgery and fighting the Good Fight with crippling mental illness. Hope you're having a good one, reader.
> 
> ig2fkr.tumblr.com

Barbara dumped an armful of comforter over the back of the couch, plugged in the heated blanket, and handed her father the remote.

"TV," she said. "And don't spend all evening riling yourself up over poor investigative methods on those late night crime shows. I think there's a figure skating competition on at ten. That should be nice and soothing."

Jim Gordon scowled at her from beneath the swathe of blankets. His nose was red from the cheap, papery tissues they kept at the station. "The press conference is on then," he said, instead of grumping over the blankets or the fact that she had put him under house arrest until the cold had passed.

"Oh, who wants to hear that guy talk." She set a new box of (proper, soft) tissues on either side of the couch.

"The mayor or Green Lantern?"

"Either." She put her hands on her hips. "Soup? I think I'll go get some soup."

"I can microwave my own."

"That new multicultural deli should still be open." She ignored him, pulling on her boots. "I'm thinking chicken and gnocchi. And some of those bread rolls."

She picked up her umbrella in case it was still raining. She had her hand on the door when her father called (grumpily), "Make mine mulligatawny."

"Yessir, commissioner," she yelled back.

He waited until she had gone, peering over the back of the couch. When the door clicked shut and the lock turned, he turned back to the TV, and flipped on NCIS.

-

The sky had cleared and the stars were out - or the few that could penetrate the light pollution at least. Barbara kept on eye on the sky as she pulled out her phone. One new message. Dick had texted back.

She opened it and sighed. All he had sent was the alien emoji - their agreed upon symbol for 'no, I'm not dead/haven't been kidnapped by the Joker/am not being slowly lowered into a vat of acid right now, I just don't want to talk'.

She stowed the phone away and stopped at her chosen vantage point, that stop between alleys where she could see a specific patch of night sky. She let the plastic bag of soup, rolls, and plastic silverware settle between her feet.

She checked her watch.

The second the minute changed, there was a faint flash on the horizon, of some nearly invisible vehicle departing at remarkable speed. Bruce was off.

"What's a little red headed thing like you doing out so late?" came a voice from behind.

Barbara swung around, bringing up the umbrella up like a staff in a practiced motion.

The woman in the alleyway held up her hands. "Don't shoot," she said.

She looked familiar. Close cropped black hair. Dark eyes. "I'm a friend of the family."

Barbara frowned, trying to place her.

"Other family," suggested the woman with a smile, and that catlike (there was no other word for it) smile brought the name to Barbara with a start.

"You're Selina Kyle," she said.

"Yes, and you're Barbara Gordon," said Selina, lowering her hands. "Commissioner's daughter, straight A student, regional judo champion. Relax," she added, at Barbara's guarded expression. "I'm not a stalker, just an old fashioned lady who likes to read the paper with her breakfast. Your father put out a very doting graduation announcement. Can't imagine why he didn't add accomplished vigilante or brutalizer of criminals to the list of accolades, unless they ran out space. Or does dad not know about your special hobby?"

"What do you want?" demanded Barbara.

"Unclench, batling, I'm not here to hurt you or spill your secrets." Selina put a finger on the tip of the still-pointed umbrella and gently pushed it down. "I'm just here to ask you, girl to girl, exactly what the hell is going on."

"What do you mean?"

"What I mean is that that tall dark and brooding and I had a date, and he normally doesn't just jet off without a 'I'll call you Tuesday' or 'Don't steal that giant diamond, Selina'. I just want to know if I got the downstairs waxed into a bat shape for no reason."

At Barbara's look (slack-jawed and appalled), Selina sighed, touching her fingers to her temples. "Joking. I said, unclench."

"If I knew anything, why would I tell you?" asked Barbara. "If you know him at all you'd know he'd let me nowhere near the work unless I could keep a secret.

Selina shrugged. "Birdboy won't answer the usual summons for chili dogs, so I thought I'd try my luck with another protégé.

"Chili dogs?"

"Kid likes them heaped with onions, it's disgusting," said Selina with no small amount of affection. "How is he?" She asked with such clear sincerity that Barbara found herself almost forced to reply with equal honesty.

"He's okay. Been better."

Selina had a troubled expression, someone distant, very different from the cheshire grin of a minute ago. The expression was startlingly like Bruce.

"I don't want to burden you, Barbara," she said abruptly. "And he may consider this none of your business, but two weeks ago he told me..." She stopped and chewed a nail, still very distant behind the eyes. "No," she said, becoming clear. She almost laughed. "It's silly. But do be careful, batling."

With startling speed, the woman disappeared, in much the same way Bruce would have, which was fitting. Her last words as cryptic as his often were.

"It's bat _girl_ ," called Barbara into the night.

No reply, except perhaps the ghost of a chuckle.

Barbara hefted her bag of soup and cutlery again, feeling as burdened as Selina had said she shouldn't have been, and bothered by the feeling. Had her last comments been left infuriatingly open on purpose? Designed to pique Barbara's interest? She couldn't believe that Selina Kyle had materialized just to introduce herself and joke about waxing. There was something here, something that her instincts (the ones she had been born with, and the ones that had been honed by both 'families') were going to agitate her sleep over, she was sure.

 _The soup is going to get cold,_ chided the brusquer part of her mind. She compartmentalized the conversation for another time.

Barbara Gordon continued her walk home, and overhead, the clouds gradually began to seethe once again.


End file.
